Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

OPINION

A witness to the Kennedy assassination

History is more vivid when we have some sort of connection to major events. For my family and me, the assassination of President Kennedy will always have a certain resonance that extends beyond the history books.

Fifty-two years ago today, my grandfather Earle V. Brown was a Dallas police officer on duty for Kennedy’s parade. He was assigned to the Texas and Pacific Railroad overpass, where he had a clear view of the presidential motorcade and the Texas School Book Depository.

As the president’s limousine proceeded down Elm Street in Dealey Plaza, my grandfather heard three gunshots. Then, as he noted, “…we saw the car coming with the president, and as it passed underneath me I looked right down and I could see this officer in the back; he had this gun and he was swinging it around, looked like a machine gun, and the president was all sprawled out, his foot on the back cushion.”

He said he smelled the gunpowder and that the shots came from “the direction of that building, that Texas School Book Depository.”

After the president was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital, my grandfather and other officers were instructed to investigate the area surrounding the School Book Depository and to write down the license plate numbers of the cars parked nearby.

Naturally he was shaken by the events of that day. He admired Kennedy, in part because of their shared Catholic faith. My mother, aunts and uncles were children at the time, but they vividly remember the somber mood within their home following the tragedy.

My grandfather’s experience is immortalized in the Warren Commission’s report, and an actor portrayed him in a JFK documentary that recently appeared on the History Channel.

I used to press him for more of his perspective. He believed wholeheartedly in the “single-shooter” conclusion of the Warren Commission. “The people who thought they heard shots from the grassy knoll were just hearing echoes,” he would say.

But he was never one to elaborate much beyond that, or to speculate on the conspiracy theories. To my knowledge he never accepted media requests for interviews – the Dallas Police Department had instructed him and the other officers to refrain from speaking to the press, and my grandfather respected that for the rest of his life.

My grandfather passed away in 2011 at the age of 94. Sharing his experiences of that day not only keeps his memory alive, but it also makes history a bit more vivid for the rest of us.

Rick Minor is a government and public policy instructor at Florida State University. He has served as a public policy consultant and was the chief of staff to former Tallahassee Mayor John Marks. He is a candidate for City Commission.